The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on the nomination of
Tom Wheeler for FCC chair at its executive session on Tuesday.
He is expected to be approved, but a full Senate vote still
awaits the White House's selection of a Republican nominee to fill the seat of
former Republican commissioner Robert McDowell.
That vote is part of a lengthy agenda for the session that
includes votes on a total of nine nominations (including five to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and markups of the Cybersecurity
Act of 2013, which the National Cable and Telecommunications Association
supports, and the Violent Content Research Act of 2013, which broadcasters
support.
The cybersecurity bill essentially backstops the president's
order directing the National Institute of Standards and Technology to oversee a
voluntary cybersecurity framework and provides for more cybersecurity education
and research.
The
violence research bill would require the National Academy of Sciences to direct
the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Department
of Health and Human Service to study the impact of violent video games and
violent video programming on children and figure out if there is a causal
connection between either and real-world violence.
